Freeing Nataku
by Fayalargo Winterwoelfin
Summary: In an ancient temple Son Goku sees pictures of Nataku that trigger his memories a life before the mountain prison. He departs on a dangerous mission to free his lost friend from Heaven. Spoilers. Oneshot.


_Disclaimer_: I don't own Saiyuki.

_Dedication_: This fic is entirely dedicatedto the sole purpose of freeing Nataku and getting that dead-look out of his golden eyes and a smile on his face.

Spoilers are for their former lives (Saiyuki Gaiden). (If you don't know about that then you won't really understand this fic anyway.)

_Summary_: In an ancient, uninhabited temple Son Goku sees pictures of Nataku that trigger memories of his life that had happened before he had been imprisoned on the mountain. He decides to go to Heaven, to free Nataku. In order to do this, he asks Sanzo to chant _sutra_ for him, to protect him from the Gods and from himself, and to show him the way back.

_A/N: _The writing style is somewhat choppy, but if you have read/watched Saiyuki as far as to know about their previous lives, I'm sure you'll understand it fine. Something concerning the names (if you don't know already): Jiroushin is the Merciful Goddess' (Kanzeon Bosatsu) adjudant, Nataku was called the Puppet Assassin (in the translation I saw it), 'baka-saru' means 'stupid monkey'.

My thanks go to _Filia _for her encouragement on this story and to _Torwen _who gave me the opportunity to watch the woderful anime. :-)

Enjoy reading!

* * *

**Freeing Nataku**

_I don't chant sutra for the dead. – _

Genjo Sanzo at Hyakugan Mao's former castle, before he chants the sutra reconnecting their fates.

* * *

Son Goku remembers this, so he asks, right after waking up from his unconsciousness filled with dreams of a former life.

"Hey, Sanzo… if I get your master's scripture back for you, will you chant a sutra for me?" It wasn't only dreams, but he has seen pictures on the wall of that old temple, pictures that reawakened memories of events that happened before he had been imprisoned for 500 years. He doesn't notice the looks of his three companions, worried, but stares straight at his 'owner' with the best puppy-eyes he can muster.

"What are you talking about, baka-saru!" Despite the monkey still on recovery, Sanzo whacks him with his infamous paper fan.

"Sanzo…" Goku ignores the fan, continues staring seriously.

The other three look worried.

"Did you hit your head that hard, chimp?" Gojyo.

"Say yes." Goku's whine is solely concentrated on the blonde monk.

He huffs. "I don't believe you can do that anyway," not withstanding the monkeys big eyes, "so 'yes'. But I won't mourn you if you get killed!"

"Yay! Thanks so much!" He jumps up from the bed and tries to hug Sanzo which brings him only more hitting with the fan.

* * *

When the sun sets in the West:

"I'm going then." Goku shoulders his nyoi-bou, and turns back to his companions for a smile. "Wait for me here. It won't be long." He sounds as if he wants to be reassuring.

"What! You've been serious?" Sanzo's chokes on his cigarette.

Gojyo laughs. "Stupid chimp. You must be delusional if you think you can do that alone!"

"We're coming with you, of course." Hakkai.

"You're not strong enough to help me…" he casts his golden gaze away and murmurs, "anymore." Only this one word.

"What are you talking about!" Sanzo gets his fan to action.

Gojyo gets worked up too.

"Don't worry." For a moment a very mature expression, "I'm the Monkey King Son Goku. Hakuryu. Let's go."

"_Kyuuu!"_

"Hey, what are you doing with Hakuryu!"

* * *

Goku walks up the street to the inn they are resting in.

"You're back." Gojyo greets him.

"Where's Sanzo?" Hakuryu on his shoulder.

"Brooding in his room."

Grin. "Okay, I'll get it to him." Waves with a scripture.

Gojyo's eyes widen. "You really…?"

Goku looks sad for a moment. He swallows and goes back looking positive.

Gojyo holds him back, puts a hand on his shoulder, forcing him to turn back. "You okay?"

"Sure." Smile. "I didn't fight my way in after all. I'm not such a baka-saru that I want to take on the whole castle of Gyumaoh all on my own. I just had to get rid of one person who came in my way. A strange man doing pervert things to a white bunny." Frown. Smiles again. "I don't think they'll miss him."

* * *

"Sanzo?" Shy.

"So you got it." Voice bored and cold. He's angry that he was left out.

"Yes." Comes over. He places the scripture on the table and catches Sanzo's gaze.

"Sanzo?" These eyes look no younger than the five hundred years they have seen.

"Please chant for me. Without you, I'm not sure if I can come back."

"Tell me what's going on." Sanzo's anger is calm.

* * *

A sun-streamed porch of a airy house with a Goddess sitting languidly in an elaborate stool watching the pond with water lilies and the brown-haired, golden-crowned heretic that hasn't been here for five hundred years, when she had sealed him away, slowly wading out of the water, shaking it off like a dog.

"What are you doing here! How did you come here?" Shock.

"I came to get Nataku."

"Nataku?" She narrows her eyes at him, and waves an alert Jiroushin back. "You…?" nonchalantly again, one eyebrow up.

"Even the spell of a God can't control the power of the Earth. I remember… some things. I'm not leaving him here on his own."

"Then go take him. He isn't much fun like that anyway." She points to the stool where the boy with the dead yellow eyes sits.

"Natakuuu!" Goku darts over. Shakes Nataku, who doesn't react.

In the meantime soldiers of the Heavenly Army pour into the room. The Merciful Goddess tells them that they should imprison both of the heretics together. Goku, too much in shock of Nataku's non-reaction, clings to the former Warprince, doesn't even fight back.

Once again iron closes against his wrists and ankles and his neck. But his gaze only is on Nataku who doesn't seem to notice anything.

The door of the cell closes with a threatening snap.

* * *

"Where's the stupid chimp gone to?"

Gojyo and Hakkai have been just in time to see Sanzo watching Goku taking off on his nyoi-bou heaven-ward. The stick has grown longer and longer, until they couldn't see its owner anymore. Now the stick itself is gone too.

"Sanzo…?" Hakkai's soft voice.

With an irritated frown Sanzo stares at the sky.

"Why didn't you hold him back, stinking monk!" Gojyo grips him hard at the shoulder.

Sanzo hits the hand away.

Eyes flashing angrily. "Do I look like I wanted to let him go!"

"But surely he did tell you where he went?" Calm. Hakkai.

Sanzo props down on the floor cross-legged. He closes his eyes.

"To Heaven."

Then he starts chanting.

Gojyo and Hakkai shiver at the intensity suddenly packing the air around Sanzo.

_Be strong, Genjo Sanzo. _

_I haven't been strong enough to save you, Master.

* * *

_

"Hey, Nataku, I hear Sanzo's voice! It'll lead us home! Nataku, do you hear it!"

Goku drops as Nataku doesn't react. The other boy leans at the prison wall like in the chair he had sat – the puppet he had been accused of being - with its strings cut.

For three days they have already been confined here.

Goku constantly talks to him, tells him stories. Sometimes he's rewarded by a flicker of acknowledgement in those dimmed golden eyes, but he can never be sure if it isn't simply caused by one of the torches on the far wall of the corridor outside their cell.

* * *

"Sanzo hasn't eaten anything in days… nor stopped chanting."

"He tries to heal scars from the past with actions in the present. He's not different than us." Hakkai.

A cigarette is crunched between angry fingers. "Hell! What did that stupid chimp tell him to make him act like a real priest for once?"

* * *

"Hey, Sanzo, I'm huuungry…" Goku tosses around in his sleep, "Saanzoo… huuungry… Saaanzooo…" He rolls on the humid stone floor, made of the same blocks as the walls to which their chains are fastened. He still hears the voice in the back of his head. A strand of fine hair catches in his coarse fingers. So fine, so beautiful. He imagines it to be of golden colour. "Saanzoo…" His muscles convulse and he hits his head at one of the chains fastening him to the wall. His body meets another and he wraps himself around. Five hundred years in chains already. And neither Konzen nor Sanzo are going to save him now. His dreams slide deeper into an abyss he thought he had left in his mountain prison. His dreams slide deeper and darker.

Meet another.

A hand shakes him by the shoulder. His slowly opening eyes stare into two glowing suns not far away.

"If I had been kept in the dark, I wouldn't have yearned for the sun…" He smiles.

"Goku!" Panicking voice and he wakes up.

Groggy. Where have I been?

Realisation.

"Nataku? Natakuuuuu!"

For a few moments they are both the kids again that had made friendship behind a holy statue of Buddha. They hug each other with the fierceness of persons that haven't seen each other for a lifetime. The chains are not able to keep them apart and the red streaks on their wrists and neck don't matter.

"Goku."

"Nataku."

They sit back against the wall, staring at each other with their golden eyes. Laugh.

* * *

Hakuryu, the Dragon-as-a-Jeep, flies up to the ancient temple Goku has discovered in the woods far off the city. After the small earthquake they found Goku unconscious up there. That was shortly before he had left to Gyumaoh's castle. Hakuryu had noticed the pictures drawn on the walls, which the Un-winged hadn't seen, being too worried about the monkey. He had seen them, and felt something stirring in the darkness of his mind. Pictures of the heretic called Nataku, for a time Warprince of Heaven, and his subjugation of the great Demon Gyumaoh. Pictures of the same, sitting with a death-like gaze in the room beside a person he recalls as the Merciful Goddess. He suspects that the earthquake has been an eruption of the Monkey King's power as the seal on his memory had broken.

Hakuryu finds that, as he looks upon the pictures, his memories haven't been sealed away. He has just forgotten to think about them.

He doesn't mind though. Being a God is much less interesting than being the jeep of a group of crazy idiots and of a driver with an impaired vision. (Hakkai's lack of one of his eyes that deprives him of his three-dimensional sight is a reliable source of entertaining situations due to narrowly avoided accidents.)

But he suspects that their journey would be less fun without the monkey. Especially for the three Un-winged.

Hakuryu eyes the pictures once more.

* * *

"Will you go home with me, Nataku? This place here is absolutely awful!"

"Sure." Full of enthusiasm. "I always thought so! Incredibly boring. And now, at least I'm freed of that annoying obligation of listening to that stuck-up idiot." He smiles his insolent, broad-mouthed smile. Of course, he means the Jade Emperor.

"Ha-ha… I still remember those nose-hairs you drew… Down there it's sooo much cooler." Shining eyes. "Wait until you meet Gojyo and Hakkai and Sanzo! Well, Sanzo's not always nice and Gojyo's a pervert kappa, but we have lots of fun!"

Nataku remembers. "I promised to show you all the hiding places and where the raspberries grow…"

"Yeah…"

"But it doesn't matter anyway, down there, there are raspberries as well, aren't there?"

"Sure! There are lot's of them… and blueberries, and strawberries… and ice-cream and meatbuns and," Goku recites the menus of what would be several restaurants. Nataku looks stupefied at first, then astonished; he starts laughing. "I always knew you'd be cool when we got to know each other!"

As Goku hears a guard passing by in the distance, he motions for them to shut up.

They stare at the dark grey iron bars of their prison.

"So, when do we go?"

The bars indifferently stare back at them, refusing to part for an escape.

* * *

"When did you eat last, Hakkai?"

"You haven't smoked for a week, Gojyo."

"Goku's gone and soon Sanzo too."

"Even Hakuryu left. We're stuck here."

Hakkai smiles his happy-I-once-was-a-mass-murderer smile. "Let's go to the inn and play poker. Just imagine the luck we must have accumulated in the game, since we're again lacking it in life in such immoderate measures."

Gojyo rolls his eyes. "Stop being so cheerful, Hakkai." Sarcastic. "You're almost matching my mood. But I guess I'll have to decline unless you eat something, because your grey and gaunt face will scare off the other customers."

"So we'll rather watch over Sanzo and wait for Goku?"

* * *

"That's depressing. I want to get out. It's boring in here. And I'm soooo hungry! They don't feed us anything!" This reminds him of Sanzo and the voice he hears in his head, calling him, albeit less clear than at the beginning.

"It's really boring." The former Warprince tears his broad mouth into a grimace.

"If I get rid of these chains…"

"…we should be strong enough to escape? The prisons are God-proof," Nataku yawns, "Not even I have enough power to break those bars."

"But I'm stronger than you!" Brash grin.

"No way in hell!" Nataku's raw voice echoes in the small stone chamber as he jumps to his feet.

"Sure I am," Goku's best, insolent-self-confident grin is in place, the stare of his eyes at once serious and challenging.

Their punches and the power behind them make the whole prison castle shake.

Panting heavily, Goku finally concedes, "You're stronger."

"Ha-ha… but you're not bad either." Nataku's voice is admiring.

"When I take the power limiter off, I'm much, much stronger." Goku brags, then suddenly sags down, "but I become a crazy, blood-lusty monster."

Nataku pityingly looks at him.

Goku suddenly shudders and stares at him with wide, angsty eyes. "Nataku! We've got to go immediately! Sanzo's voice has been getting quieter. I can barely hear him anymore."

Nataku impulsively punches the bars of the prison with his fist, not bearing to see his only friend almost in tears. A shock-wave of power races through the prison cell, but the bars don't budge a centimetre.

"At least we got rid of the chains…" Nataku says to cheer him up. And true - the heavy metal lies in scattered, small pieces from their previous fight.

Gloomily they stare at the bars.

* * *

Goku and Nataku sleep, their exhausted faces turned towards each other. The Puppet Assassin is leaning on the Monkey King's shoulder who has his head propped on top of the others. Both of their mouths stand open a little, Goku's drops of drool are lost in Nataku's shining black hair.

The Merciful Goddess shakes her head in disbelief, black curls twirling around her face, a half-smile on her lips. _Children…_She isn't the kind of person with overflowing emotions, but even she can't help thinking. _Aren't they cute…_  
The bells on her feet tinkle as she moves a step nearer to the bars.

"Wake up!" she commands.

Son Goku emits a loud snort as if consciously obstreperous, and Nataku snuggles closer to him.

"Hey, wake up, you lazy-asses!" and as they still don't react she throws the keys to the cell through the bars right into the Monkey King's face. Big brown eyes open instantly.

"Ouch! Sanzo… why did you hit me! Is it time for breakfast already?" Suddenly he blinks several times confusedly until he realises it isn't Sanzo who has woken him up so brutally.

The sparsely clad person outside the cell is Konzen's aunt. _Violence goes in the family._

"What's this?" Nataku points at the iron on the floor beside Goku.

Quickly Nataku takes the keys and opens the cell, letting them out. All the while watched by the Goddess.

"Why did you do that?" Goku. Hoarsely.

"I'm the Merciful Goddess." Benevolent smile (fake). "Being merciful is what I'm here for." She waves her thin, perfectly manicured fingers, "And now go. You don't belong here."

Goku smiles happily. "Thank you."

She smiles even more and hands him a limp blue-white little dragon. "Please take this with you when you go."

"Hakuryu!" Enthusiast outcry. "You're honestly merciful!"

As soon as the two naïve heretics are out of earshot, she starts laughing uncontrollably until her adjutant Jiroushin comes to collect her and leads her back to her rooms.

She takes place on her beautiful stool and leans back, contently folds her hands on her lap.

"Do you want to play a game, Merciful Goddess?" Jiroushin indicates at the chess board on the table.

She smiles and gives him an arrogant, unbelieving glance. "Now when the fun is only beginning?"

* * *

Goku and Nataku sneak out of the prison castle.

"Where now?" asks Goku, "I actually don't know the way out!"

"I do," Nataku smiles grimly. "And half of the Heavenly Army lies between us and the exit."

* * *

Jiroushin breathes in shockedly. "That's the only reason you helped them!"

She impatiently waves her hand. "That stupid little dragon, ex-Gojun, claimed I owed him a favour from a time I-don't-know-how-many-thousand years ago!" An angry crease appears on her perfect forehead.

* * *

"It doesn't look so bad. I can easily take half of them."

"What about sneaking by?"

"Goku, the terrain's plain and without cover…"

"I'll take the left half then."

"I'll take the right."

"I bet that my half is down earlier than yours!"

"You dream!"

"Let's go."

"Yeah, let's go."

Grinning widely they barge on.

* * *

"Ohhh… they are so much fun!" The Merciful Goddess sighs in delight.

Jiroushin looks increasingly desperate. "But… Merciful Goddess!"

The grin on her face grows wider as a group of soldiers, dodged by Son Goku, suddenly find themselves facing the raging power of Nataku, who wipes them away with a single stroke.

"Shouldn't we have alerted somebody?" Jiroushin near to panicking. "They are wiping out our soldiers like ants!"

"Jiroushin, calm down." She laughs, a deep, derisive sound. "The rest of the army will notice soon enough. And if not…" she shrugs.

* * *

Son Goku attacks forward with wild strikes, while Nataku watches his back, and continues to slash at his half of the Army Company.

They reach the Door - Exit of Heaven, behind them a field of unconscious bodies. Both are panting heavily, but their equally golden eyes shine with mirth and battle-joy.

Without looking back, they push the giant doors open.

They now only have to get to the Lower World.

"Wah!" Goku. "Sanzo! I can hear Sanzo's voice so much clearer from here!"

"So you know where to go from here?"

Goku closes his eyes for a moment, concentrates on that brilliant, clear sound in his head. He rises his arm, points diagonally downward. "There!" He turns around to Nataku, a broad grin on his face "Let's go!"

But Nataku's answer is one of panic. "Get down!"

"Hein?"

It's too late.

From all sides soldiers of Heaven's Elite Troup attack the two heretics. After only seconds they are pinned to the floor.

"Gokuuuu!" Nataku's slender limbs are twisted violently, causing him to cry out in pain. Once again fastened by heavy chains.

"Natakuuu…!" Goku struggles and squirms, against the hands all over his body holding him down, biting a hand that comes near his neck with the iron. Another pair of hand seizes his hair to hold his head down. Desperate over Nataku's pained cries as soldiers kick him into back and stomach he writhes stronger, ever stronger, mobilising reserves of strength he doesn't know he possesses.

He reaches a point within himself, he has been there before, where his power originates.

Power that smells of blood and madness.

_Sanzoooo!_ The voice that has always been there, he reaches for it, wrapping himself in the warm and glowing gold. The monk's reassuring presence and the power of his sutra make the madness rolling off him, like water from a raincoat, as he dives into the source of his power.

As his struggles intensify more of the soldiers grip him to pin him down. But he's stronger than them.

Suddenly, a jolt of pain.

A single, long moment he stares at the soldier that in bewilderment holds the golden coronet –gone off in his frantic struggles.

Then Son Goku cries in agony as he begins to change into a monster.

A red haze clouds his sight, and the golden light that has protected him is shorn from his mind, born away from the avalanche of madness that submerges his consciousness.

_Noooo! Sanzoooooo!

* * *

_

Blood all over the place.

Sanzo's chant stops. Gasp. He doubles over. His face, formerly pale and exhausted, now an ashen-grey grimace of pain.

He had never been sure of his connection to the monkey, but when Goku had answered his protecting sutra, he knew it had been there all the time.

Only to be lost in the red rage and pain of the bloodlust washing through his mind. Too much for him to handle. Too much…

_Be strong, Genjo Sanzo_.

"Ch..."

His body refuses to move.

Until, "Hakkai! Stop that. You're not going to save Sanzo by killing yourself!" Gojyo tries to push Hakkai away from the still priest.

"I'm not killing myself; I'm just giving Sanzo some Qi!"

"Let him, Gojyo," Sanzo opens his mouth for the first time since he his chant has been interrupted. His voice is raspy, rusty.

_Be strong, Genjo Sanzo._

Sitting up, heavily. Eyes shine eerily in a gaunt face, a reckless gaze, as he turns his face to the red-head. "Just think of how Hakkai would feel if I simply died on him."

Hakkai smiles and adds, equally sarcastic. "See?"

Gojyo hits his fist hard into the dusty soil. "And who cares about my feelings?" he cries. "Who the fuck?"

* * *

Nataku helplessly watches his friend turn into a monster.

But he has been helpless all of his life. Forced to obey.

He has been lonely all of his life. Forced apart from friendship and love.

Now he refuses.

_Never again!

* * *

_

Hakkai's Qi pouring into Sanzo's body recedes as the demon drops to the floor unconsciously.

Gojyo panically rushes to his side.

"Hakkai!" His breathing is shallow.

Sanzo's chant is only a murmur, desperate. Barely moving lips. Only his eyes shining, open, unseeing.

"Damn!" Gojyo's cry is unheard by either of them.

* * *

_Goku_.

A whisper and a tiny dot of golden light in the sea of blood.

Nataku stands up, the soldiers around him falling with the chains on his limbs from his power and his determination.

The dot of golden light. Goku reaches for it. Hears the whisper of a voice.

_Kill, kill_.

The voice is calling him.

_Kill, kill._ He kills all around him.

He knows the voice. It's calling for him to come back.

_Kill, kill._

Who? He can't remember.

Only _Bloodlust_.

He will go there, to where that annoying voice is.

To _kill_.

* * *

Nataku follows Goku through the mass of soldiers. Goku moves erratically, killing all those around him. But he's heading in one general direction.

Nataku will follow him everywhere.

* * *

"My, my…" The Merciful Goddess is fascinated. She even forgets to smile.

The two heretics are glorious in their attempt to escape. Shining.

Heaven is nothing measured against them.

"What a pity they have called the 'leeches'…"

* * *

Nataku knows why he's feeling weaker with every stroke. The 'leeches' have come, the power drainers. The executioners of the God-world. They drain the powers of rebellious Gods until they lose their god-bodies and are reincarnated.

* * *

"What will they do now?" Jiroushin panicking again.

The Merciful Goddess draws up an eyebrow, but her gaze doesn't leave the fight. "You're now on their side?"

"They will be drained of their powers before they reach the door to the Lower World!"

"I think that Goku is probably unaffected by it, as a creature of the Earth." Calm.

"But he's crazy! And Nataku is not holding up long anymore!" Jiroushin paces. "We've got to help them!"

"Feeling rebellious, aren't we?" The Merciful Goddess snorts at her adjutant. "But we're Gods. Merely watchers."

"Mer-ci-ful-Godd-ess!" Jiroushin cries, outraged.

"Merely watchers." She smiles smugly.

* * *

Nataku feels his powers coming to an end. Soon he'll be killed, either by the soldiers or by Son Goku.

He sees the sneers on the men's faces.

He can't hold back his own smile. They think he has to fight his way to Lower World. Go through the door. But no one knows the hidden passageways of Heaven better than the former Warprince.

Only a few metres now.

Here, an opening in the mass of enemies.

Calling in all the power reserves he possesses, he jumps at the Monkey King, wraps him in his arms, and with the impact takes him towards the hole that secretly connects Heaven to the Lower World.

* * *

Son Goku's fighting with the only one left, wanting only to kill.

But his movements are slow. He has fought too much today. His prey is evading too quickly.

He doesn't mind, leaves the black-haired one alone. He'll kill the still present golden dot of light instead. It's not far now.

* * *

Sha Gojyo feels the earth under his feet trembling.

His eyes narrow. A powerful presence is nearing. All the little hairs on his back stand up. He knows that feeling.

Son Goku. The crazy monster. The Monkey King.

From a mere point in the distance, he's speeding towards him.

Suddenly, Gojyo's stomach drops. Not from fear.

The air is quiet. Empty.

Sanzo's mumbled sutra has stopped.

Only now when it is gone is he aware how dense the air around the priest had been with his power.

"Sanzo… No!"

The priest smiles dryly, his eyes close. He falls back, looking dead.

"Waaah."

Gojyo barely has the time to summon his weapon before the crazy monkey jumps at him with a teeth-bared snarl.

Once again, Gojyo fights for his life.

Only when he's not overwhelmed after Goku's first two strikes, he notices that the other's motions are slower than usual, the wild glow in his eyes flickers, he's badly wounded. Gojyo throws him against a wall with a strike, and it even takes him several seconds to stand up.

In which Gojyo sees another person approaching, bleeding heavily from several deep cuts all over his body. He's only as big as Goku, and looks as young. For a weird moment, Gojyo thinks he knows him. Something about his sympathetic face and his golden eyes, narrowed painfully, and how he holds himself proudly despite staggering towards Gojyo. He _should_ know him.

The boy coughs. Spits blood. He collapses beside Gojyo.

A golden coronet, which he recognises as Goku's power-limiter, rolls out of his weak hand, comes to a halt beside Gojyo's foot. A last, pleading gaze out of those golden eyes before they close. Long black hair spills all over the figure and the soil, mingling with the fresh blood, oozing from his wounds.

Gojyo's not fast enough to block Goku's attack, but as he falls, he crouches to get a grip on the coronet.

And the moment the Monkey King is distracted putting his hands around Gojyo's throat, pressing, his sharp nails digging in his vulnerable skin, instead of fighting the suffocating stranglehold, he slips the golden coronet over the brown hair.

* * *

"Gojyo-san!" A female voice, surprised.

Four sets of footsteps quickly approaching.

The grey smoke of a cigarette slowly spirals up a clear blue sky.

"What happened here?" Kougaiji's throaty voice.

"Baldy!" A girl's cry as she rushes to monk's side.

"Don't tell me _you_ did all that, little bro?" The well-muscled demon surveys the scene doubtfully.

Four people lying unconscious on the floor. All of them look more dead than alive. Son Goku and another boy bleeding puddles on the ground, the priest and Hakkai no outwards wounds, but barely breathing. The fifth, Gojyo, standing, swaying.

"Very funny, Dokugaku." Gojyo's knees are weak, his voice too. The fight hasn't been over for more than a minute. He still feels the claws on his throat. "I'll give you back that stupid Seiten scripture Goku stole and you help me patch them up, ok?" He takes a deep drag from his cigarette, but his nerves being as high-strung as they are, the small amount of nicotine doesn't have any effect at all.

Kougaiji frowns at him, trying to look stern and unforgiving.

"Please, Kougaiji-sama." Yaone is already at Hakkai's side.

"Kou…"

"Oniiiiiichan!"

"Hn." The expression in his eyes softens. "I'm only paying back debts. And I get the scripture."

"_Kyuuu!_"

The Dragon-as-a-Jeep lands on Gojyo's shoulder. Finally, he too has arrived home, after sealing off the secret exit to Lower World behind the two heretics.

_If I didn't take care of them..._

But the little dragon is tired too. Making the count five unconscious to five conscious creatures.

But all of them alive.

* * *

_Epilogue_

Several weeks later. They have continued their journey to the west, with one added member to their group. Nataku has lost a great deal of his powers during his escape from heaven, but as long as he's with Goku he doesn't mind.

A new routine has settled in their daily life.

In front of an inn, in the morning.

"Kuso-puppet! Baka-saru!"

Sanzo, gun in his left hand, paper fan in the right, shooting irately at the two golden eyed monsters.

"I'll never forgive you THAT!"

Tear-eyed laughter from the two heretics.

Several more shoots. Goku and Nataku barely manage to escape over the roof of the inn.

"My, my… Sanzo, please calm down." Hakkai, smiling.

Sanzo stares at him. Wildly glinting eyes.

"What did they do again?" Still smiling.

"Cho-co-late Cigarettes…" Sanzo grounds out, mouth twitching madly.

Hakkai giggles, Gojyo holds his stomach laughing.

"You are _so_ going to DIE!" he shouts at no one in special.

* * *

The Merciful Goddess up in Heaven grins widely.

"Congratulations, Konzen, first a Pet and now a Puppet… you're acquiring quite a zoo."

She makes sure that Genjo Sanzo hears her voice.

"You old damn hag!" She watches in mirth as he points his gun up and shoots several bullets towards the sky, direction Heaven.

She watches them for a long time.

"You know what, Jiroushin?"

"What is it, Merciful Goddess?"

"Sometimes I really wish I were alive too."

* * *

A/N: Yes, the doctor died. I only wish it had been more painful. There are things that never will be forgiven... ´

Reviews will make Nataku smile! ;-)


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